The present disclosure relates to an image forming apparatus, an image forming method, and a program.
Currently, as a thermal transfer printer, printers of a sublimation type, a fusion type, and a thermal type are widely used. However, in the thermal transfer printer, there is a case in which the glossiness of an image is damaged due to minute irregularities formed on an image surface. Thus, in the related art, the image surface is flattened by heating and pressing a flat surface on the image surface, thereby improving the glossiness of the image.
For example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2009-248520, there has been disclosed an image forming method in which the glossiness of an image is improved using a thermal transfer sheet including an ink layer and a protective material layer, and a reforming sheet including a printing opening and a surface property reforming unit.
In this method, first, the reforming sheet is sandwiched in between a medium to be recorded and the thermal transfer sheet. Next, the ink layer is transferred onto the medium to be recorded through the printing opening to thereby form a printing layer (image), and the protective material layer is transferred onto the medium to be recorded to thereby form a protection layer on the printing layer. Next, the thermal transfer sheet and the reforming sheet are aligned, and a flat surface of the surface property reforming unit is pressed on the protection layer through a protective material layer region after transferring the protective material layer (hereinafter, referred to as “transferred protective material layer”) to thereby be heated, so that surface property of the protection layer is reformed.